That's a hastily jotted down outline for a short story that I vomited up over a decade ago. I recently remembered it existed and dug it out only to find that the coded scribbles of a college senior don't translate well to a thirty-something momma. Even if they are the same person.

Handwriting is kind of an issue for me. I was supposed to be left-handed, but being the littlest in my entirely right-pawed family meant that I was mimicking my parents and older sister in order to learn simple motor functions - holding a crayon, cutting with a scissors, even picking up my cup. Learning to tie my shoes was tantamount to torture until my sharp-eyed first grade teacher explained to my parents that I was naturally left-handed, but conditioned to be right. My lefty Grandma showed me a handy-dandy approach to shoelaces and I've pretty much got that down these days. But the handwriting continues to suffer (see Exhibit A).

There are other elements working against me in resurrecting the short story from Mindy-Of-The-Past. I often write to myself in a sort of code. It's not about protecting my creative babies from wandering eyes intent on stealing my stuff, or even a time-saving attempt at my own private shorthand. It's an Irish self-defense mechanism, I suppose, a physical way of keeping anyone from getting too close to something very important to me - my mind.

Which sounds kind of cool until I find a sentence like this:

Hsb. sys to w the "nitrogen line" and then the "miasma of life" idea of steering whl. and heat.

And thirty-something says, WTF?!?